Garden Dirt Goes "Green"

Designer dirt? Dirtless gardens? It's the new wave in gardening. Not content to add a little fertilizer and see how it goes, gardeners want guaranteed spectacular results in exchange for their creaky knees and dirty fingernails.

"You can't grow a thing in backyard soil the way it is," said Steve Titko, director of technical services for Scotts Miracle-Gro. "Either you commit to improving the soil or doing containers."

Native soils often lack essential nutrients and are easily compacted, creating poor drainage conditions for plants. Too much fertilizer without an appropriate mix of other products can add too much pH to the soil, actually "burning" plant roots, causing the plants to yellow and die.

New commercial mixes that can be added to the soil or simply used as topsoil themselves help renew soil vigor, making vegetables and flowers grow bigger and faster. The new premium mixes include pine or hardwood bark, slow- and quick-release fertilizers, animal manures, processed food wastes, lime, sawdust, peat moss, sand, ash, coconut husk fibers, and more. Most commercial and large public and private greenhouses now use these designer blends exclusively.

Like many lawn-care companies, Scotts is courting the "green" or organic consumer market. According to Titko, Scotts uses about 7 million cubic yards of materials annually to produce various soil mixes. "About 5 million of that is what we recycle or divert from the waste stream. These are largely organic materials such as agricultural manures, food waste products, green waste, paper and sawmill wastes and byproducts," he said. These organic materials are composted, then mixed with 2 million cubic yards of mineral or mined products before being bagged and shipped to your local garden center. Scotts' goal is to produce a soil mix that is 50% naturally derived within the next few years.

What's coming for your garden in the near future? Someday soon you may be gardening with scented soils that add a hint of evergreen or citronella to your backyard breeze. I wouldn't mind that. No more fighting off mosquitoes when you garden after dinner!

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